Even with a $1.4 billion fortune, Tyler Perry isn’t handing out freebies—especially not to family.
On the July 20 episode of Den of Kings, hosted by Kirk Franklin and featuring guests Jeezy and Derrick Haynes, Perry opened up about keeping things real when it comes to hiring loved ones. Around the 17-minute mark, he revealed he once had to fire his own aunt.
“She said she wanted a job. She would always call asking for money. I said, ‘Okay,’ I would send her the money,” Perry shared. “I [was] like, ‘Listen, I want to help you. I want to help you build this thing, not be welfare to you. So, let me give you a job.’”
But Perry’s aunt didn’t take the opportunity seriously. According to the Straw director, she often skipped work. “’Okay, well you gotta go,’” he recalled telling her. “You want me to hand you the money but you don’t want to work for it. See, that doesn’t work for me.”
That same mindset applies to how he’s raising his 10-year-old son, Aman. Perry said his son has to “do chores” and “work” for what he wants, explaining, “I don’t believe in giving us things that are just going to handicap us. That is the worst thing you can do.”
Following the death of his mother, Willie Maxine Perry, in 2009, Perry gave his family a 60-day warning to get “gainfully employed.”
“‘Because I’m not going to keep supporting you like this,’” he told them. He added that they “all got jobs.”
“It wasn’t even jobs where they’re making a lot of money, but it was a job,” he continued. “It was something else for them to do to feel some pride in. That’s the same thing I would want somebody to do for me.”
Perry also shared that some family members have gotten “mad” at him for not giving them a million dollars and warned Derrick Hayes during the roundtable to watch out for relatives trying to take financial advantage.
He’s spoken about his no-handouts parenting style before—telling Sherri Shepherd last December that Aman only gets “books and Legos” as gifts and flies coach.
